There are three general trends in the interpretative history of the passage, and we can identify them heuristically as follows: the traditional interpretation (which sees the kenosis as concealing the divine qualities in Christ), the radical interpretation (in which kenosis consists in the abandoning of divine qualities in Christ), and a contemporary interpretation that has lately become quite prominent in exegetical scholarship (wherein the kenosis has been viewed as revelatory of God’s character and action).
Revelatory (Contemporary) Interpretation
For the ancient Christologies, the majesty of God in Christ as the immutable, transcendent, almighty deity had to be preserved in the face of ancient challenges like Arianism, and so the hymn was appropriated to those ends. For the ninenteenth-century kenoticists, the radical humanity of the incarnation had to be emphasized in the face of ever-growing post-Enlightenment critiques of dogmatic history. Ultimately, however, in both cases, there seems to have been a certain determinative sense in which the passage was commandeered by foregoing doctrinal concerns, rather than being used to formatively direct those doctrinal concerns.
Gratefully, much contemporary scholarship has studied the passage with more critical awareness of such ingrained presuppositions, and this more neutral work has opened new avenues in understanding. Thus we now turn to a spectrum of scholarship on the passage that is both recent and integrative, encompassing many of the foregoing interpretive issues into a fresh outlook on the passage. This interpretation takes the kenosis of Christ to be not a concealment of divinity, and not an abandonment of any foregoing aspect of that divinity, but rather a revelation of the divinity’s character and nature. Hence we can call this the “revelatory” interpretation. The major interlocutors who have contributed to such an understanding include Gerald Hawthorne, N. T. Wright, Richard Bauckham, Gordon Fee, and Michael Gorman.
Gratefully, much contemporary scholarship has studied the passage with more critical awareness of such ingrained presuppositions, and this more neutral work has opened new avenues in understanding. Thus we now turn to a spectrum of scholarship on the passage that is both recent and integrative, encompassing many of the foregoing interpretive issues into a fresh outlook on the passage. This interpretation takes the kenosis of Christ to be not a concealment of divinity, and not an abandonment of any foregoing aspect of that divinity, but rather a revelation of the divinity’s character and nature. Hence we can call this the “revelatory” interpretation. The major interlocutors who have contributed to such an understanding include Gerald Hawthorne, N. T. Wright, Richard Bauckham, Gordon Fee, and Michael Gorman.
Philippians 2:7 and Its Christological Interpretations
The final element of this line of exegesis comes into focus when we consider that the participle hyparchōn has been argued by Moule (and followed more recently and forcefully by Wright, Gorman, and others) as being causative—“because he was in the form of God”—rather than concessive—“although he was in the form of God.”That is, the self-emptying does not provide any sort of exception to or abandoning of the form of God. Rather Christ’s self-emptying is illustrative of the fact that he possesses the form of God. This fundamentally shifts the understanding of kenosis in the passage. For, on this interpretation, it is quite correct to say that when Christ empties himself he is demonstrating his divinity, and not doing something that obscures it (as in the traditional interpretations) or that is an exception to that divine life (as in the radical interpretations).
Gorman is emphatic here: “Kenosis, therefore, does not mean Christ’s emptying himself of his divinity (or of anything else), but rather Christ’s exercising his divinity, his equality with God.” Wright expresses it similarly, saying ekenōsen “does not refer to the loss of divine attributes but—in good Pauline fashion—to making something powerless, emptying it of apparent significance. The real humiliation of the incarnation and the cross is that one who was himself God, and who never during the whole process stopped being God, could embrace such a vocation.”
Such an interpretation—the kenosis as a revelation of God’s divinity rather than an exceptional mode of being undertaken by that divinity—clearly challenges the radical forms of kenotic Christology.
Graham Ward, quoting F. F. Bruce, concurs, saying that “the implication is not that Christ, by becoming incarnate, exchanged the form of God for the form of the slave, but that he manifested the form of God in the form of the slave.” It is in this sense that we can unify also the tapeinotic and kenotic aspects of the hymn, which means that we must go beyond positions that claim “Jesus’ kenosis was sociopolitical rather than metaphysical,” for Christ’s “tapeinosis” (humble bearing of his life in the world) is reflective of the kenotic divine economy at large and involves the real suspension of things that had characterized the divine life “prior to” the incarnation (majesty, glory, splendor, etc. see John 17:5). Here then we find exegetical foundation for discussion of the “humanity of God.”
Gorman is emphatic here: “Kenosis, therefore, does not mean Christ’s emptying himself of his divinity (or of anything else), but rather Christ’s exercising his divinity, his equality with God.” Wright expresses it similarly, saying ekenōsen “does not refer to the loss of divine attributes but—in good Pauline fashion—to making something powerless, emptying it of apparent significance. The real humiliation of the incarnation and the cross is that one who was himself God, and who never during the whole process stopped being God, could embrace such a vocation.”
Such an interpretation—the kenosis as a revelation of God’s divinity rather than an exceptional mode of being undertaken by that divinity—clearly challenges the radical forms of kenotic Christology.
Graham Ward, quoting F. F. Bruce, concurs, saying that “the implication is not that Christ, by becoming incarnate, exchanged the form of God for the form of the slave, but that he manifested the form of God in the form of the slave.” It is in this sense that we can unify also the tapeinotic and kenotic aspects of the hymn, which means that we must go beyond positions that claim “Jesus’ kenosis was sociopolitical rather than metaphysical,” for Christ’s “tapeinosis” (humble bearing of his life in the world) is reflective of the kenotic divine economy at large and involves the real suspension of things that had characterized the divine life “prior to” the incarnation (majesty, glory, splendor, etc. see John 17:5). Here then we find exegetical foundation for discussion of the “humanity of God.”
- Samuel J. Youngs, The Way of the Kenotic Christ:
The Christology of Jürgen Moltmann, 2019
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